When Müller had finished his work, he determined to publish it himself, hoping to gain not only honour but legitimate profit. He was exhausted by hard work, but he trusted to meet with the reward which he felt to be due to such continual effort, and to meet with it at once. Time passed, however, and the young engraver, a prey to feverish anxiety, began to rail at the indifference of his contemporaries. He had soon to make arrangements with a publisher, that the fruit of his labours might not be altogether lost. Several amateurs then bought proofs, but there was as yet no general popularity for a print the appearance of which, in the expectation of its author, should have had all the importance of a public event. So many disappointments completed the ruin of his health, and at last affected his reason. In a paroxysm of excitement, Müller stabbed himself with a burnisher. Shortly after his "Sistine Madonna" obtained that great success which the poor artist had fondly anticipated. The publisher grew rich upon the proofs; and the name of the young engraver who had made too great haste to sell them was with justice acclaimed throughout Europe. The works of Bervic, of Desnoyers, of Morghen and of Müller, may be said to represent the state of engraving in France, in Italy, and in Germany during the early years of the nineteenth century. They show that at that time the three schools professed the same doctrines, or, at least, followed the same masters; but this seeming conformity was not destined to be of long duration. The principles of art were soon modified by the influence of new ideas, and the German engravers (taking the lead in this change of aim) entered the path which they are still following. At the time of Müller's death, the influence of Goethe and Schiller on German literature had begun to extend to the pictorial arts. Passionate study of the Middle Ages took the place of the worship of antiquity, and whilst the classical dictionary was still the only gospel for French painters, those beyond the Rhine were already drinking inspiration from Christian tradition and national legend. This was a happy reaction in so far as it reinvested art with that ethereal character which is indispensable to its higher developments; but, on the other hand, rapidly degenerating into mere archæology, the movement ended by oppressing and imprisoning talent under invariable formulas. A few years sufficed to reduce German art to such a condition that asceticism became the established rule. Since then Overbeck, Cornelius, and Kaulbach have added the weight of their authority and example, and continued and perfected the tradition of their forerunners; and this reformation has been as thorough in Germany as the far different revolution accomplished by David in France.